NRoberts - G2 Black Rose

 “That’d be good. When you’ve got time, can you show me some grafting? Stella said how you do most of it, at least the field work, about this time of year. I’d really like to do something, then, you know, follow it on through.”

 “Sure, if you want.” He handed her a bottle of water. “You can try your hand on a willow. It was the first graft my mother showed me how to do, and they’re the best to practice on.”

 “That’d be great. I thought one day, when I get a place for me and Lily, I could plant something I’d made myself.”

 He sat, ordered himself to concentrate on his inventory program. The scent of her, somehow essential female, fit so perfectly with the smell of earth and growth. “You’ve got plenty of room at the house.”

 “More than.” She laughed, tried to read over his shoulder. “Been there a year, and still can’t get used to all the space. I love living there, I do, and it’s wonderful for Lily to have so many people around, and nobody, nobody could be more amazing than your mama. She’s the most awesome person I know. But sooner or later, I need to, well, plant Lily and me somewhere of our own.”

 “You know Mama loves having you there or she’d’ve nudged you along by now.”

 “Boy, that’s the truth. She really knows how to structure things, doesn’t she? Sets them up to suit her. I don’t mean that exactly the way it sounds. It’s just that she’s strong and smart, and doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything or anyone. I admire that so much.”

 “You seem to have plenty of guts and brains of your own.”

 “Guts maybe, but I’ve started to realize a lot of that came from not knowing any better.” Idly, she picked up a scrap of raffia, twisted it around her finger. “When I look back, I don’t know how I worked up to setting out six-months pregnant. Not now that I have Lily and realize, well, everything. I’m going to owe Roz for the rest of my life.”

 “She wouldn’t want that.”

 “That’s one thing she’s not going to have any choice about. My baby’s got a good, loving home. I’ve got a job that I swear I like more every day. We’ve got friends, and family. We’d’ve done all right, I’d’ve made sure of it. But we wouldn’t be where we are now, Lily and I, without Roz.”

 “Funny, I was thinking how most everything—the house, this place, even Logan and Stella wind around to my mother. Maybe even the Bride.”

 “Why the Bride?”

 “If Mama had sold the place—and there had to be times it would’ve been easier to do that—maybe the Bride wouldn’t still be there. Maybe it takes a Harper being in the house. I don’t know.” He shrugged, got up to select the plants he’d checked off his inventory. “It was just something I wondered about.”

 “Could be right. You wouldn’t sell it, would you, when it comes to you?”

 “No. Fact is, every time I think, maybe I should move out of the carriage house, get some place, I just can’t do it. It’s where I want to be, that’s one thing. And the other is no matter how smart or strong my mother is, I feel it’s better that I’m around. I think she’d be sad, and a little lonely, if you and Lily went somewhere else, especially since Stella and the boys’ll be moving into Logan’s in a couple months.”

 “Maybe, and I’m not planning on anything right away. But with her and Mitch dating, it could be she’ll have all the company she wants.”

 “What?” He stopped dead, with a young, healthy ficus in his arms. “Dating? What do you mean dating? They’re not dating.”

 “When two people go out two or three times, to basketball games, to dinner and what not, when theshe in the pair cooks thehe dinner herself, I tend to call it dating.”

 “They’re working on this project. It’s like . . . meetings.”

 She gave him the female smile he recognized. The one that categorized him as a pitifully out-of-touch male. “You don’t generally adjourn a meeting with a long, hot kiss—at least I haven’t been lucky enough to have a meeting like that for some time.”

 “Kiss? What—”

 “I wasn’t spying or anything,” she said quickly. “I happened to be up with Lily one night, looked out the window when Mitch brought Roz home. Okay, I sort of looked out on purpose when I heard the car, just to see what was what. And if the liplock I witnessed is anything to go by, that’s some serious dating.”

 He set the plant down again, with a thump. “Well, for Christ’s sake.”

 She blinked. “Harper, you don’t have any problem with Roz seeing a man like that. That’d be just silly.”

 “Last time she was seeing a man like that, she ended up married to the son of a bitch.”

 “She made a mistake,” Hayley said, heating up. “And Mitch is nothing like that bastard Bryce Clerk.”

 “And we know this because?”

 “Because we do.”

 “Not good enough.”

 “He certainly is good enough for her.”

 “That’s not what I said. I said—”

 “Just because he isn’t rich, or doesn’t have that fancy Harper blood running through him doesn’t mean you should build a case against him.” She drilled a finger straight into Harper’s chest. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, talking like some snob.”

 “I’m not saying that, don’t be stupid.”

 “Don’t you call me stupid.”